Adams statues with limitations prompt review in Quincy

Quincy officials have started looking for a consultant who can recommend art to go in the new Adams Green park, part of the city’s downtown redevelopment project. The city’s planning director said the changes may need to include larger versions of the ex...

“Whether or not they will complement the new park design has yet to be seen,” City Planner Dennis Harrington said of the existing statues.

The proposed Adams Green park will create new green space where Hancock Street currently runs between city hall and the Church of the Presidents. Harrington said the park, targeted for 2015 completion, will be larger than Copley Square Park in Boston.

Because the John Adams and Abigail Adams statues, both designed by sculptor Lloyd Lillie, are life size, Harrington said it may make sense to build bigger versions so they don’t lose their prominence in the new park.

The statue of John Adams, the nation’s second president, went up in 2001 in City Hall Plaza on Hancock Street. Bronzed depictions of his wife, Abigail, and their son, John Quincy Adams, were built four years earlier next to the Church of the Presidents.

Christopher Walker, spokesman for Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, said although the city is looking for an artist to help with the Adams Green project, he wouldn’t comment specifically on the Adams statues.

“It’s very early in the process,” Walker said, later adding: “It’s always been contemplated that public art would be a major component of the new park. Beyond that, no determinations have been made on what goes where and how.”

Harrington said the city has hired Halvorson Design, which has designed several urban parks in Boston, to draw up plans for Adams Green. All design work for Adams Green is being funded by a $1 million grant from the state’s Gateway City Parks program.

The city has $6 million in federal transportation money to pay for park-related upgrades to utilities, traffic signals and sidewalks. The actual park construction, totaling $15 million, is expected to be funded by the state’s Investment Incentive Program, known as I-Cubed.